This archive report was first published on 5 July 2019.
Published on July 5, 2019, a team of researchers, including a Kenyan scientist, has made a significant breakthrough in the fight against HIV.
Dr. Benson Edagwa, an assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Nebraska Medical Centre, and researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, have successfully eliminated the virus in living mice using a new drug.
The team used a combination of a modified ARV treatment to keep the virus at low activity levels, along with a powerful gene-editing technique that snipped out HIV genes from infected cells.
With an estimated 19.6 million people in East and Southern Africa, including 1.5 million Kenyans, living with HIV, the journey to getting a cure seems to be nearing the homestretch.
"This observation is the first step toward showing for the first time, to my knowledge, that HIV is a curable disease," said Kamel Khalili, director of the Neurovirology and the Comprehensive NeuroAIDS Centre at Temple University's Lewis Katz School of Medicine.
The new drug, LASER ART, is a medication found to be effective when released slowly over a long period of time. It targets viral sanctuaries and maintains HIV replication at low levels for extended periods of time, reducing the frequency of ART administration.
